Royce

Well, I had my first job interview over the phone. It was for a library director job. I am probably horribly under-qualified, but thought to try anyway.

Job interviews are so funny, and phone ones are just cosmic on the weird scale.

It was your typical “Work your way through these scenarios that rarely happens” questions.

Where do these questions come from? The runaway library board, the disgruntled coworker, policies you follow but don’t like, difficult patrons, smelly patrons….

To be honest, my library board is pretty cool. My library is pretty cool. I love working there.
They support gaming. We have had tourneys, and taken the wii to retirement communities. That is a lot by Kansas standards. Of course, they could have more, but that’s just me pushing the edges. They have all kinds of cool stuff. So working there hasn’t prepared me for some of the questions.

The questions about budgeting, I felt I answered okay. My main experiences with budgets are working with a vestry at church, home life, and paying attention at work. I am a reference librarian, other than getting money to help support a program, I don’t work with budgets. There is no way for me to do this. It is no ones fault, it is just that way.

The questions about policy I felt I nailed. No bragging, but I actually enjoy crafting policy. I have helped create a couple of them at my library, and yes they are official policy. I have taught two workshops on creating policy.

I had hoped I would have gotten some technology questions, but didn’t. That was kind of a red flag. I feel technology is pretty important to the sustainability of all libraries, from rural to academic, so that put me aback.

That was that, no time for me to ask questions back, or for there to be any dialog between me and the interview committee. It was ten questions, done one at a time.

I just wish I had questions like: How did you deal with the patron that always wants to talk to you about football? Why do you wave or say hello to every patron? How does it feel when a coworker asks you to help them out? Why do you let veterans tell old war stories? What does the term Third Place mean to you? 2.0?

Because the answers to those questions are why I enjoy being a librarian.

Oh well, sigh a couple of times. Figure out the answers to the questions I didn’t answer all that well. Get ready for the next one.

In honor of today being “Gaming @ Your Library” Day, I announce the first recipients of the coveted ‘Gold Coin’ award for the sponsorship of gaming in libraries.

Since this is the first year of the award, we will start with two “Gold Coin” award winners:

Eli Neiburger of the Ann Arbor District Library
(And I am hoping my library gets me “Gamers….in the library?!”)

Jenny Levine, the Shifted Librarian
(She could win based solely on her authorship of the Library Technology Reports that focused on gaming. I wore the first edition out. Well, I didn’t, but I did spill a sloppy joe on it.) But she ALSO speaks nationally on the topic and runs a pretty awesome blog. (theShiftedLibrarian)

It has to be these two, anybody else and it is a sham.

I personally want to thank both of them for providing me with the “tools, weapons, and extra clips” of knowledge I needed to get gaming going in my library.

Eli, has provided great blueprints for success on creating a gaming culture in a library, and Jenny continues to raise the level of discourse on the topic.

In the end, they both brought some fun and enjoyment into the Library.

Kudos to the both of you. You inspire me to be better.
You both get extra lives.

Whew! The KLA conference is over and I am still recovering. All in all it was a pretty good time down in DuDa (apparently this is the nickname for Wichita.)

My first presentation of the conference was on gaming and boy was it fun. We had three giant screens set up, with stations for Guitar Hero, Wii Sports and Halo. With the help of pals like Diana Hyle and Eric Gustafson we were able to put on quite a little show.

The first thing I did was let everyone know we had handouts on gaming available. When those ran out I started handing out business cards with the address for the LibraryCampKS wiki page where my gaming handouts are currently stored. At first I was a little disappointed that some people got up and left when I mentioned that there was not going to be a presentation portion to the event. But then I realized that if you are not new to gaming, then you probably wanted a little bit more than what I offered. (We can’t all be Jenny Levine!)

Luckily for kids in Kansas, there were quite a few librarians interested in bringing gaming programs to libraries. Probably the most asked question was “What kind of system do I buy?”
My standard response was that you need to find out what kind of games you want to play first, and then find the system that will support as many of those games as possible.

In the end it was awesome.

I want to thank the following people and organizations who made this possible:

Jenny Levine, aka the Shifted Librarian, without her help and inspiration I would never had have the guts to bring this up at my library and then eventually present on our success at the KLA conference.

Ron Brown, the AV contractor for the conference. Through many emails we were able to coordinate getting most of the equipment set up. All I had to do was unpack the consoles and play.

The person at KLA who told Ron Brown to “give Royce whatever he wants.”

Diana Hyle and Eric Gustafson for being there to help answer questions and play.

And last but not least, the Manhattan Public Library for creating an environment for staff to create programs that speak to the needs of our patrons, and for allowing me to borrow some of the equipment needed for the games. MPL rules!

Ah, the internets. Always something fun just around the corner. Where do you find this cool stuff? Well if you are like me, you count on the good people at BoingBoing.net to do the hard work for you. They seem to scratch that knowledge itch that I have. For some, probably not anything they would be into at all, and yes, even sometimes the Royce finds some of the schtuff gross! And it is for adults, and yeah it crosses the line from time to time, so don’t say I didn’t warn ya.

BUT!!!!!!

They introduced me to Ask Mr. Biggs! An Internet radio show that mixes in clips from other real radio shows. Its hard to describe, but once you hear it…..my god, its genius.

I would start with Show #0017 – Mr. Biggs simplifies Digital TV.

I am a big fan of comedy albums and this episode is pretty close to being in my top ten. It is that good.